West Indies batting troubles

Gavaskar looking at Bravo's poor footwork 

and Samuels losing his "top of off stump"

And those are the two most experienced players in the squad. Bravo looked like he wanted no part of being at the crease facing the short ball.

West Indies Cricket is going through a transition. Nothing is going well for them on or off the field. The team is not performing, the board is not functioning well. But it is a temporary situation and will soon pass over. They have enough of great cricket mind who are taking stock of the situation and coming out to help Windies cricket, which is a sign of revival itself. Things have to be sorted out by making necessary tinkering here and there. The islands have no dearth of talent and hope cricket will come back soon.

Quote: Jermaine Blackwood, Roston Chase, Shane Dowrich, Jason Holder. One Jamaican, three Bajans. Two beanpoles, two little guys. All of them 24 years old.

On Wednesday, they made 63, 137*, 74 and 64*, and became only the fifth set of batsmen occupying numbers five, six, seven and eight to make 50-plus scores in the same Test innings. They saved a Test match for West Indies, and in doing so gave them a glimpse, perhaps, of a middle order coming together for the long term.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/west-indies-...42193.html

Find an opening partner for Brathwaite, and swap out Samuels for Hope or Singh, and suddenly the batting lineup looks to have some grit and stability.

Something like:

Brathwaite
Johnson
Hope
Bravo
Blackwood
Chase
Dowrich
Holder
Bishoo
Joseph
Gabriel

After 6 Tests/ 11 innings Shai Hope average is 15 .54 with a HS of 36

Fair point. Admittedly, he hasn't set the world on fire in his first 6 Tests, however, he had a great season in the PCL, including scoring two hundreds in his last three matches, and also notched a century for the WICB Presidents XI in the Indian's first warm-up match of the tour.

He has pedigree and still very young. Hope finished with the highest average in this years PCL (67.25) and also averaged 53.33 in 2015. Over the last two years, his combined average is a robust 58.90. The talent is there.

Not that I am comparing him to Marvan Atapattu, but Atapattu also got off to a slow start in his Test career with an average of 7.58 through his first 12 innings and he turned out okay.

Shai need a few more years of conditioning !

At 22, he has time to develop.

Ishant will cut him in half.

Hope did get the better of Ishant in the warm-up match, finishing with an unbeaten 118. Not that one innings is predictive of anything. But he at least went toe to toe to him.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/ma...22589.html

You are right that Hope still has plenty of team to develop, but for me, he is already a top 10 WI batsman. I'd have no qualms in selecting either Johnson or Singh ahead of him, but to keep selecting the mediocrity of Samuels ahead of him (or Johnson and Singh) is a waste. Samuels is what he is. He has no upside. We have 118 innings worth of data to show this.

Since 2015, West Indies opening pair have averaged 17.10 for the first wicket - the lowest in Test cricket. They have just one 50 partnership in 28 innings, and are one of only two teams (Zimbabwe the other) without a century partnership. Their highest opening wicket stand is 59.

They will come around one day. Shai is a pretty good player and one day he will be even better